


the less i know the better

by Companionable



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, Genji Shimada is a saint and an angel, Hanzo gets a deserved ass kicking and an even more deserved life threat, Jesse takes matters into his own hands, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Post-Dragons Short, Post-Recall, Somewhere in the background of this fic Angela is weeping on Jack's shoulders, Southern Speech Is A Mystery To This Canadian Author, rated for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 07:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9710759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Companionable/pseuds/Companionable
Summary: Hanzo shows up at the doors of the new Overwatch after Winston's recall. Jesse McCree aims to make friends, and predictably fails, because what else was he going to do. In the aftermath, Genji gets to the root of it all.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this got started literal ages ago, in the age of sanity where president trump was a funny shitposting gag. mostly i just wanted someone to fucking kick hanzo shimada in the teeth for _killing his fucking little brother what the fuck hanzo in what goddamn world_. and then somewhere in the middle of it mcgenji happened and it all went to hell in a handbasket. i dont know, yall, i dont plan this shit im just along for the ride.
> 
> find me on twitter [here](http://twitter.com/tayttimus) if you're interested. i'd link my tumblr but honestly i dont go on there often anymore.

“Alright,” Genji says after an extended silence, hand pressed to his visor so that the dim green light peeks through the spaces between his fingers in a way that shouldn’t be distracting, but is anyway. “Tell me again how this happened.”

Jesse McCree, international outlaw and spiritual successor to the -- now defunct -- Blackwatch name and glory, murderer of too many men to count both in his time with Deadlock and working under Blackwatch before the fall, is being lectured by a man five years his junior and a thousand times more deadly than him, for sure. He suspects the life choices that led him to this fate might have begun when he opted to play cowboy in the 21st century, but he’d be damned if that could stop him now.

The silence hangs a little longer while Jesse rubs sheepishly at his neck. “Look, it’s not so bad as everyone is makin’ it out to be, now, hon--”

“I did not ask for excuses,” Genji says, without heat, but all the more shame-inducing for being so. “I asked how this happened.”

If Jesse pouts up at Genji then, it’s only because he can’t rightly help it at this point. Genji rolls his head back in a way that means he’s _also_ rolling his eyes. “Babe... he _killed you_. ‘M not much the type to let something like that fly by me without takin’ good aim and tryin’ to shoot it down some.”

Genji sighs, a strangely computerized sound that always makes Jesse’s skin thrill pleasantly no matter the context. “Much like how you try to solve _all_ your problems.” Despite his weary tone, Genji moves to sit next to Jesse with a hand dropped easily to his shoulder. Jesse thinks that if he popped that visor off him, Genji would have a fond little smile playing across his banged-up face. “I’m not mad...” he starts, then turns away, reconsidering. “No, I’m a little mad, mostly that you appear to think that I wouldn’t have done something myself if I were still in pain over what had happened, but...” The hand drops from Jesse’s shoulder to slide around his waist, and Jesse wraps his arm around Genji’s shoulders to allow it. “Tell me what you were thinking. Sometimes your head is still a mystery to me, Jesse.”

Despite the tension between them, Jesse can’t help but turn and press a kiss to the side of Genji’s helmet. He knows he can’t feel it, so he makes the sound obnoxiously loud to compensate, which prompts a subtle, shaking laugh out of Genji. “Well, the same can be said for me ‘bout you, honeybunch.” He tucks Genji’s head under his chin and draws him closer, then sighs. “I just don’t get it. Morrison bringing on your brother, just because he’s a good shot... I’m a good shot, dammit!”

“And is that not why they brought you on initially?”

Jesse stops, grumbles. “Well, yeah, in a manner a’ speakin’, but also because they needed my intel to bring down the Deadlock Gang. We already took down the Shimada-gumi, babe, there ain’t no need to be bringin’ him on.”

Genji wraps his other arm around Jesse’s middle. “You know as well as Morrison-san does that Talon is not giving us a break, and with them around there will almost certainly be Widowmaker. If the Widowmaker is around to obstruct our business, we need a sniper of equal level to counteract their advances. Hanzo is that sniper, and I think Morrison-san is thinking of that.”

“Like I said, darlin’, I’m a damn good shot! I can take that blue-faced b--”

To make a point, Genji pulls away to look Jesse full in the face while he reaches a foot out to emphatically kick one of Jesse’s boots. It falls over in predictable fashion, causing much more commotion than it ought to, due of course to the spur attached to its heel.

Jesse pointedly stares ahead, arm still around Genji’s shoulders. “I could be persuaded into gettin’ rid of the spurs for the sake of stealth and quietude an’ all that.” Genji doesn’t look away from him, but instead somehow manages to convey with a tilt of his head that he is _immensely_ sceptical of this notion. “And,” Jesse continues, looking down at him now, “for the record, I was goin’ t’say ‘buzzard’. I was gonna call her a buzzard.”

Genji resumes pressing his face to Jesse’s chest, but says “Mmhm,” in the most unconvinced tone Jesse has ever heard roboticized. It hurts. Jesse is mortally wounded by this lack of confidence. “So, you hear that my brother is being brought on the new team, and you... what, think this is so foolish that you ought to take the matter into your own hands?”

Jesse grinds his teeth, rubbing his chin on Genji’s head in frustration. “Not when you put it like that, no...”

“And yet,” Genji says leadingly, and when Jesse doesn’t seem open to continuing the notion, he continues, “and yet I had to pick you up from Angela’s medbay like a child from the principal’s office.” A gentle application of pressure finds Jesse reclining onto his cot, pulling Genji along his chest as he goes. Genji takes a few moments to situate all his metallic bits and ends, before propping his chin on Jesse’s barrel of a chest and gazing at him. How a glowing visor can be scrutinizing, Jesse may never rightly know. “Would you care to explain such a strange situation of events? Or was my brother just a... how would you put this...”

“A cow paddy maggot stuck the wrong end up a mule’s ass?”

Genji busts out a laugh, a thing that ejects itself out of him and turns his whole body into a brief spasm of mirth. “That is far better than anything I could have come up with, thank you.” He’s still laughing, and Jesse giggles along with him, if only because Genji laughing is such a genuine joy every time it happens.

Once he quiets, however, he considers Jesse again. “So?”

Jesse lets his head fall back onto the cot so he can stare at the ceiling of his room. “What? ‘So’ nothin’, babe. You lived with him for the whole first half of your life, you know just’s well as I do that man ain’t no kind of hospitable to kind folk. That alone should speak to why I--”

“What did he do, Jesse,” Genji sighs on him, and Jesse lifts up just enough to see the tilt of his head.

There’s a few beats of silence. Somewhere in the new Overwatch facility a machine turns on to activate the climate regulation system Winston’s set up, and on top of him Genji releases the regulated bursts of exhaust that pass for him breathing. “He called you a ‘thing’, baby.”

Genji, whose visor had dimmed and lights up at Jesse’s quiet speech, lifts his head over the rise of his breastbone to get a look at Jesse’s expression. “He did?”

It doesn’t really sound like a question.

“He waltzed in, preenin’ like a damn canary in the spring at Morrison’s side, lookin’ like he’d own the place in a hot minute. And he introduced himself, and I shook his damn hand, babe -- I swear I was bein’ downright gentlemanly -- I shook it and I told him I figured it’d be a pleasure workin’ with him on account of the two of us bein’ the fine combination what we are...” Jesse sighs, feeling Genji’s weight lifted and lowered with the heaving expansion and contraction of his chest with it. He drags a hand along his face. “I said, ‘Hey, me and your brother make quite the team, if you’re anythin’ like him I’d say we might do the same.’ And the motherfucker dropped my hand like a hot buttered biscuit, _sneered_ at me, and said ‘I am nothing like whatever thing has fooled you into believing it is my brother.’ And then he went to leave, just like that.”

His retelling hangs in the air between them, and Jesse thinks for a moment that he can hear Genji’s brain whirring to process this information even though that’s one of the parts of him that remains untouched by machine. “I see.” His head turns so his cheek metal is pressed to Jesse’s pectoral, his visor dimming again, but not going out. It’s not a dismissal or sign of him checking out, just something Jesse has come to understand as Genji entering a state of analysis and contemplation. Thinkin’ his Genji-est thoughts. He wonders, briefly, if when Genji was all flesh he would do the same in closing his eyes, or if this is something the monks in Nepal have taught him. “And then?” he asks, only one half of his visor lighting, as if opening only one eye to consider him.

“‘And then’ _what_ , sugarplum!?” Jesse shouts and sits upright in a single motion, forcing Genji out of his leisurely sprawl. “And then I got so steamin’ mad I heard _Reyes_ ’ voice as if he were growlin’ drill orders direct into my damn ear! I turned your sonuvabitch brother around by his high ‘n’ mighty shoulder and socked him one good enough I’d believe it if your grandpappy felt it!”

Genji’s visor is fully lit, and he is unreally, inhumanly still. “Why did you get so mad, Jesse? Why does this anger still fill you, even now?”

It’s all Jesse can do to shift away to give himself some room to breathe. Suddenly everything is much closer than before. “Really? Genji, honey, I know you went through some voodoo shit up in those mountains or whatever--”

“Buddhist,” Genji corrects, just loud enough to be heard over Jesse.

“--and that gave you some real wild interpretations of human emotion in a robotic body, but, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, hon! That ain’t the way it works for me!”

Genji holds up a hand. “This is not because of my training with Zenyatta, McCree--”

“Oh, _consarn_ it, Genji, I _know_ that!” Jesse yells, slamming his prosthetic hand with force into the mattress. “Don’t you ‘ _McCree_ ’ me, babe, I ain’t in the kinda mood to deal with that on top a’ everythin’ else, alright? At the very least I want _you_ to let me speak m’damn mind till I figure out what fuckin’ words I actually want to mean, okay?”

Genji is stock still before him again. It’s not comforting. “Fine, Jesse. Speak; find the words you _do_ mean.”

“ _Thank_ you,” he says, and reaches his hand out to rest on Genji’s with a less-than-comforting clang. “I’m sorry, I just...” He waits till he gets a nod, then continues. “What I meant was... I _love you_ , babe. And damn if that don’t mean I feel your wounds for you sometimes. I know what went down between you and Hanzo was some rough shit, and it messed you up real good for reasons that are more’n obvious. And I also know that you dealt with bein’ messed up like that with Zenny and the rest of ‘em up in the mountains. And, shit,” he says, smiling a little at where their hands are met, “if that don’t make me proud a’ who you are, ‘n’ what you’ve become, I don’t think I can ever be proud of any ol’ thang.” Genji’s shoulders shake just slightly in what Jesse hopes is a laugh. “The truth of it is that I don’t really give a rat’s rotten ass what he thinks of you. He lost that privilege a long time ago, and I don’t know as he can ever rightly get it back.”

Genji sits up slowly and scoots closer, not really looking at Jesse but being hesitant still, and Jesse pulls him back against his chest, flopping back on the bed once more.

“What I _do_ care about, Genji, is that he’d belittle what you’ve turned into, how far you’ve come, and all the goddamn _effort_ you put into holdin’ on to the man that _was_ his brother. All the work you did to remain at least partly that man, while still managing to be _someone else_ as well. You ain’t no thing, Genji. You’re a monument to human fuckin’ perseverance, a testament to the will of man. And I’ll be damned if I ever stand for any Tom, Dick or Harry puttin’ you down for that fuckin’ unreal accomplishment. Whether he’s your dickhead brother or not.”

He’s not sure how long they lie, tucked up into one another in the dim light of Jesse’s bunk after he’s finished his little declaration, but it’s long enough for his stomach to toss with how much he’s bared his soul. Jesse’s just about to apologize for pouring it on too thick when Genji pulls his hands away from Jesse’s chest and flicks off the latches on his visor.

“Have I told you lately, Jesse McCree, that you’re both a good man and a beautiful bastard, and also that I love you very, very much?” says a wonderful, unroboticized voice.

Genji’s lips are cracked along the scars and his one eye doesn’t quite look at him right, but Jesse smiles with all the fondness his little heart can muster at this gorgeous guy who understands him even when he’s making next to no sense. “I think you might’ve said somethin’ to that effect recently, but it’s always a goddamn delight to hear it again, m’ little birdie.”

A leg swings over to Jesse’s other side and Genji places his palms on either side of his face, bending over him as he straddles his hips. “What do you say I show, instead of tell, this time?”

His heart skips a beat as he cranes his neck upward to catch Genji’s beautiful, busted lips. “You ain’t gon’ find no complaints here, sunshine.”

* * *

 

Hanzo’s room is dark, if only because he’s drawn the curtains and shut the door. He’s not sure what hour it is, or whether the sun ought to be up. The biotic compress glows weakly from the construction of wood which serves as a bedside table in his bunk, and fades. Why did he come here? What did he hope to accomplish? Genji had revealed himself and then asked him here, but that had done nothing to soothe either the ache of guilt, or the flames of hate. At the very least, Morrison-san had been begrudgingly grateful for his acquiescence in eliminating Talon, so perhaps there was _some_ good to be done here.

The room is not small enough for him to miss the door to his room opening, but if it were any bigger, he might have. It pulls outward without a sound, and it is just as dark on the other side as it is in the bunk. The hallway lights must have been disabled. “What do you want,” Hanzo asks, resigned.

Green reflects off the surfaces of the walls, fading in through a slow transition from darkness to light. Genji steps into the doorframe and leans against the jamb, his arms crossed in a manner that is eerily reminiscent of their childhood, yet isn’t quite a perfect match. It’s tainted with some other affectation, someone else’s air of nonchalance, as if Genji has forgotten his own. Japanese comes easy from him. “I didn’t think you’d take me up on my offer.”

“So soon?”

Genji makes a noise that sounds somewhere between an engine starting and an ancient modem dial-up. “At all.”

“Events conspired to make this my best option. What business do you have with me.”

“A warning, brother.” It’s said without menace, almost friendly. “That stupid cowboy is mine, and I am his dragon. That,” and he gestures to Hanzo’s eye, the bruise still not fully receded despite Mercy’s biotics, “was benevolence. What I will do to you if you take it upon yourself to hurt him will be a swift end. Say what you will about me, I don’t care anymore. But do not touch him.”

Hanzo snorts. “You must truly have erased what little of my brother might have been left in you. He never would have been caught dead with that man.”

A flash of green light, and a point is suddenly pressed against his neck, his body backed up against the wall of his room. Genji’s forearm holds him there with mechanical strength, and a shuriken nicks his throat with every swallow. “Ah, but Hanzo. Don’t you remember?” he asks, and for a brief moment Hanzo hears the grin. “You already killed me.”

Genji steps back toward the door and Hanzo’s feet touch the ground again, struggling not to let on that he’s gasping for air.

“This new Overwatch needs you, brother, and so I need you. But I have lived through hell since you and the Shimada Empire cast me into the flames, and so I know it intimately.” He casts a green light as he looks over his shoulder at Hanzo, bent over and trying to staunch the stubborn bleeding from the small nick on his neck. “I will not hesitate to make your life difficult, Hanzo.”

All of Genji’s lights dim, and the night is dark once again. Try though he might, Hanzo can’t hear steps leave, and even after his eyes have adjusted he’s unsure if Genji’s truly left.

Slowly, casting a cursory glance down each end of the hall, Hanzo closes, and locks, the door.


End file.
